


how to disappear

by resurrectedhippo



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-11 11:37:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20545532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/resurrectedhippo/pseuds/resurrectedhippo
Summary: What it says on the tin.





	how to disappear

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by Lana del Rey's newest album, Norman Fucking Rockwell and many conversations with imperialstark on Tumblr.

Somedays, Tony wants to disappear. He’s genius enough to crack time-travel if he tried. Maybe he can build a spaceship to take him to a void. A place where the stars are too far apart to shine light. 

Howard didn’t want Tony’s presence unless he was a good, productive, obedient little Stark. In those moments, all Tony yearned for was for his father to notice the effort he put into building robots and designing superhero-inspired electronics. Howard only noticed the mistakes in calculations, the missteps, and holes on the wall. Failed experiments. Perhaps, Tony thought, it’d be better if his father’s expectations disappeared. 

They never did. And unfortunately for Tony, his own desires of fatherhood was never a second thought to Howard.

*

He designs a program to remove all of ‘Tony Stark’ from the web but ends up deleting it. There isn’t any use. No amount of money in the Stark Trust could remove all the times he fucked up and relished the notorious caricature of the Stark Prodigy. 

Sometimes, he thinks Howard would be rolling in his grave to see Tony’s exploits. 

*

Other days, Tony remembers Yinsen and thinks that disappearing is impossible. He’s Tony Stark after all. And not only that, he’s Iron Man.

*

It begins a bit like this – like Tony’s seven again and wants to please his father, but he ends up saying the wrong words and talks to fast. He does the opposite of what his father wants. Tony watches a frown form before he turns away. He doesn’t want to see the snicker. 

Only, in Steve Rogers’ case, Tony doesn’t look away. First, comes bemusement, then a concerned dip of the brow. 

Steve doesn’t demand respect but expects it. He’s a goddamn boy from the 1940s, all gentleman, polite, and self-righteousness. Tony is instantly irritated by Steve’s self-assurance and patriotism. But the mission is successful and after sitting in a round table with destroyed concrete around them, shawarma in each hand, Tony changes mind.

*

Some days it goes a bit like this: Steve telling Tony how much he fucked up and can’t ever follow directions and is too all willing to put himself in danger. 

“What do you care, Cap? The mission was a success.”

“The end isn’t all that matters, Stark.”

Tony doesn’t comment that in the workshop it’s never Stark or Iron Man, but Tony, or idiot. 

Some days at the workshop is filled with easy banter and smiles. It sounds romantic, but it’s anything but. 

*

Well, it’s Tony fucking Stark, of course, he’ll deny any effort. But it’s Steve Rogers and Tony can’t help it if he makes space in the workshop just for Steve. He needs a new couch for guests, anyways. Never mind, that these days, it’s only Steve who pops by. 

*

And so it goes a bit like that. They are friends, more than anything, they are able to rely on each other. Steve brings him coffee and drags him to walk around Central Park. Tony buys them overpriced ice-cream from vendors and pays a carriage driver a ridiculous amount of money to take the reins of a horse and parade Steve Rogers around the park. 

He was ostentatious. But that’s just how Tony loved. 

*

There were days – hell, weeks, and then the following years – Tony thought about Siberia. 

Somedays, he refused to touch that madness: Steve’s weight on top of him. Shield and arc meeting for a kiss. Only, Tony was hurt and crying because Barnes murdered his parents and Steve knew. The bastard knew, and even in the fit of rage, Tony still loved Steve. 

Other days, Tony pokes at the box, opens it, examines the memory from every angle. He remembers it differently each time. Tony recalled what happened after Steve screamed and punched the space beside Tony’s face. 

The circumstances were difficult for both of them. Tony’s a genius, even if Pepper calls him emotionally repressed. He recognized the turmoil of Steve’s situation. Childhood friend versus the man he fucks when he’s angry or lonely, almost his lover, but most solidly his friend. 

“Don’t. Don’t. Don’t disappear.” Tony whispers, his mouth inches from Steve. He can’t tell if it’s a tear or sweat that hits his face. All he knows it is that it’s from Steve.

“I have to.” Steve replies, visibly torn, withdrawing himself from Tony. 

Tony lets him.

Somedays, Tony remembers it differently.

He grabs Steve’s waist, to begs him to stay, tells him that they could work it out. That they’ve been through the end of the world more than once, but why does this feel like Tony’s world is about to collapse? 

*

It goes like this: the arc kisses the shield, then Steve throws it haphazardly. He kisses Tony, all angry and bruising as if he felt the weight of Tony’s pain. Sometimes, Tony thinks, that maybe Steve wanted to take the rage in his chest with that kiss. 

Still kissing, they strip as best they can. They’re so frantic that Tony only opens the armor, doesn’t’ fully remove it. Steve is worse. He’s got the suit down to his thighs, panting. 

He opens Tony up, fingers sure and precise, slick with both of their spit. But there’s nothing kind or slow about it. It’s all rough edges. 

Later, Tony thinks that maybe they both knew it was the end. There. In that moment, when Steve breaches him and they both hold each other’s eyes, panting. 

It’s like he’s standing at the edge of the cliff, without the Iron Man suit, naked without the armor, just waiting for Steve to push him down. Hell, Tony would go if Steve was at the bottom of the cliff. 

*

Other times, Tony thinks it goes a bit like this: They’re both in their suits, bloodied and grimy. 

Tony hates him so much, but he says anyways, “Don’t disappear.” 

“I’m not going anywhere.” 

But mostly, the mind is flawed, he can’t be sure what happened, and the armor was too damaged to record their lines word for word. The tender anguish in their faces as they wish that circumstances were different – that they were both elsewhere and Steve was straddling him for entirely different reasons. 

Tony tries not to think about how it really went. He’s a genius. He has perfect recall. Almost. 

“Think about those years.” Tony whispered, tasting the tang of blood in his mouth.

“I’ll always be here.” Steve pulled himself up, looking down at Tony. He felt so naked on the floor, bloodied by a man who never said the words I love you but declared it in so many other ways. 

Except, not going anywhere feels like goodbye. It hits home when Steve walks off, leaving Tony in a pool of blood, arc reactor doing nothing to help him breathe. 

*

Some days, Tony picks up the phone. The old, ugly, bulky thing, and stops himself from dialing the only number saved. 

He wonders if he’ll ever find the strength to press ‘call’ and ask Steve if they could love each other softly this time.

*

It’s Steve who runs to Tony when he hobbles out of the space ship, tired, dehydrated, a skeleton of the man he was, weighed down by the loss and watching Peter Parker fade into nothingness.

Tony wishes that Steve ran just as fast two years ago. Towards Tony, not away. Tony was dying then, too. 

*

They’re back together. No, not like that, but as a team. He doesn’t feel at all guilty when he denies Steve’s askance to take on Thanos. 

Together, again, Steve had explained in the porch of the home Tony raises his child. A stark reminder of who he was then and who he is now. Tony’s got priorities, he has a family now, someone to look after and give the world too. It’s no longer Steve.

*

But it’s the right decision to drive a fast car. Tony is snark and biting humor when he fetches the shield from the truck and hands it over to Steve.

He puts it on Steve’s arm, and that’s where it belongs.

Tony wonders if that inanimate object was him at some point. 

*

The 70s was fun, though Tony barely remembers it as a child. Most of his memories are about science, Howard working him to the bone, his mother sighing when she found cuts and burns on Tony’s figures, and Jarvis tending to his wounds, telling him not to overwork himself. 

The 70s with Steve is a riot. Just like old times, a throwback to missions they went on as Avengers. 

He finds Howard, still an enigma, and Tony is transported back to when he was a child, starry-eyed at the presence of his father. This time, Tony knows loss, and perhaps, without excusing his father’s behavior, he understands Howard a bit more. 

Tony can only hope that when all of this is over, when they defeat Thanos, that he’s a better father than Howard ever was. 

As he parts with Howard, Tony catches Steve’s the pride in Steve’s eyes, and the small smile on his lips.

Steve knew all about his childhood bullshit. Captain America tried to peel off his layers of defense, armor by armor, bolt by bolt, he wanted to see the man under the suit. Tony’s history, his dreams, the scars on his chest, the mole on his belly, and his desire.

He wonders if Steve could still be part of his future, even as friends. 

*

He looks at Pepper, loving her for the life she’s given him. Morgan is all Tony. She only has Pepper’s nose. 

He only has enough energy to turn his head. It’s so heavy. He’s up to his last breathes when he finally catches Steve’s eyes. 

Only if they were the better version of themselves. Better yet, only if they were the best versions of themselves, then maybe there would have been more kisses. More time and promises of a longer life. Of safety, of reuniting their family again. But then they were them – two flawed men, constrained by expectations and their own skewed conception of what was good.

They’re just two men fighting for the things they hold dear. Even when they’re scared. Even at the cost of their lives. 

“I’m here. I’m here. We’re here.” Steve tells him, eyes bright, brimming with tears, almost like that time in Siberia when the shield kissed the arc on his chest. 

Tony’s still a masochist if he remembers the brutal fight as a kiss. He thinks, wryly, until now, he can’t stop loving Steve Rogers. 

He only has a minute or so left. He still has enough of his brain capacity to know that the energy from the stone only grants him just over three minutes. The bodily impact and the strain in his lungs stop him from saying all the things he holds dear. 

He can’t forget how he feels. He still has enough life in him to remember what he feels. Gratefulness for living a full life. Even if it was bruised in pain, disappointments, and regret. 

Tony thinks amongst the lines of: I love this man, I love this man, I’ve loved this man for a long time. 

“Don’t disappear.” Steve tells him earnestly, like a promise, the exact words Tony said years ago. Only now, Tony realizes, they both say the phrase when it feels like the end of the world. 

“I’m always here.” Tony tries to grin, a small twist of the lips, but blood leaks out of his mouth. The statement feels like he’s coming home.


End file.
